The terrorist front group that coerced federal and local law enforcement agencies in the United States to change the way they conduct terrorism training is also wielding its power to control what occurs in the nation’s public schools, including large taxpayer-funded universities.

It’s a distressing power grab by a wealthy and politically-connected group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), that promotes itself as the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy organization. The truth is that CAIR is a terrorist front group with extensive links to foreign and domestic Islamists. It was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine. In 2008 CAIR was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation. Read more in a Judicial Watch special report that focuses on Muslim charities.

During the Obama presidency CAIR has flexed its muscle and the administration has caved into its outrageous demands in the name of Muslim outreach. For instance, CAIR persuaded the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to purge anti-terrorism training material considered “offensive” to Muslims. Judicial Watch uncovered that scandal last summer after obtaining hundreds of pages of FBI documents with details of the deal. JW also published a special report on the arrangement in December. CAIR also worked on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but the spy agency has refused JW’s request for documents and last month asserted that records of any meetings with the radical Islamic group are classified.

We do know however, that CAIR succeeded in getting several police departments in Illinois to cancel their anti-terrorism training after complaints that the instructor was blatantly anti-Muslim. It all started with anti-terrorism training for local police in Lombard, a small town located about 20 miles west of Chicago. The Lombard Police Department quickly cancelled its training and pulled officers out of the course, called “Islamic Awareness as a Counter-Terrorist Strategy.” Other police departments in Illinois, including Elmhurst and Highland Park, that were scheduled to take the course also caved in and cancelled the trainings at CAIR’s request.

Just a few months ago, CAIR joined forces with other Islamic activists to demand a complete overhaul in the way all law enforcement officers are trained in the United States. In a bold letter to Lisa O. Monaco, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, the Islamic groups demanded that the Obama administration implement a mandatory retraining program for all federal, state and local law enforcement officials who may have been subjected to materials they deem “biased and discriminatory” against Muslims. They also want an audit of all federal law enforcement and intelligence gathering training and educational materials to identify and remove information the groups claim could exhibit bias against any race, ethnicity, religion or national origin.

It doesn’t end there. CAIR has expanded its mission to include censoring material at public schools in this country and has been especially active in Florida. Among the targets is one of the nation’s largest taxpayer-funded universities, situated in the central part of the Sunshine State. It’s called the University of Central Florida and it has an enrollment of around 59,000. A tenured communications professor, Jonathan Matusitz, was targeted by CAIR for teaching anti-Muslim bigotry because his course stresses the link between terrorism and Islamic culture. The award-winning academic, a native of Belgium, also suggests countries should resist the global spread of Islam.

Unlike the FBI, administrators at the university refused to cave into CAIR’s demands to censor the popular professor, who a few years ago published a book titled “Terrorism & Communication: A Critical Introduction.” Professor Matusitz told JW that CAIR wrote a letter to the dean and sent a spy to his class focusing on how culture shapes terrorism in an effort to intimidate him. “My question to CAIR is where do jihadists ideas come from, Matusitz said. “It’s a brain-washing process, a cultural process.”

CAIR has also meddled into other U.S. government arenas. A few years ago it demanded that one of the country’s largest public school districts, in South Florida’s Broward County, close twice a year to celebrate Islamic holy days. Heck, earlier this year, CAIR ordered Florida prison officials to offer Muslim inmates special meals prepared according to Islamic law. They’re known as halal meals and they cost taxpayers a lot more than the regular jailhouse cuisine.